Jan, 2019

Why we strive toward short surveys

The mission of Spinos is to answer your business questions in the smartest possible way. One of the consequences of this, is that we always strive toward short surveys. Here are seven reasons why we always reduce the questions we ask consumers as much as possible:

Cost reduction

The financial argument is of course very predictable. Respondents are paid
based on the length of the questionnaire, and on top of that: there’s less analysing
to be done with less questions. A large budget reduction!

Better data quality

Respondents fill in shorter questionnaires significantly better. Less of
them only click on the middle of a scale, responses are more consistent. And
about (Likert)scales: please stop using them wherever possible. And also, don’t
cheat by trying to force three questions into one. Both options give you less
qualitative respons.

Lower non-response bias

Consumers finish shorter questionnaires more often, which gives a huge
reduction of non-response bias. Researches with a list of 5 questions get 5%
non-completes, when you bore your respondents with 40 questionnaires, this
rises to 20%. (source:
Surveymonkey)

The respondent will feel better afterwards

After a long and tedious questionnaire, your respondent will remain with a negative
feeling. As your research presumably is about your category and/or brand, this
negative feeling will be associated with your products/brands. That’s really something you want to
avoid.

More focus on what you really
want to know

You know the feeling, when you finally can start your research project, the
whole company wants to add more questions. But are they “need to know” or “nice to know”? Restricting yourself to a
short survey, forces you to stay critical and only add those questions that
make you change your strategy.

Agile way of working:
interpret and implement results gradually

Very large surveys offer a lot of information and insights. In my opinion,
só much, that your organisation will never be able to process them all and put
them into action. Often, I review all market reseach of the last five years for
one of my customers, and I find answers to questions they want to re-research,
or insights they “forgot” and that are incorporated again into their yearly
plans. A better approach is to split your budget and rather execute four small
researches in one year that lead to profitable growth, than one big research of
which (more than) half of the information is not used at all.

Responsibility towards your co-researchers

We market researchers are extremely dependent on consumers willing to
respond. Not only in panels, but also via email or websites. After every buy,
we get an email to give our opinion. Sometimes I’m checking my email in a
restaurant during a coffee after a nice dinner, and I am already being asked to
write a review about something that has not even ended yet! Let’s take our
responsibility together and make sure consumers do not get “research tired”!